LUSAKA, Sept 12 (AFP) - The United Nations and African states will press western pharmaceutical companies to make effective drugs available to the millions of Africans infected by AIDS, a UN official said here Sunday.

UNAIDS executive director Peter Piot told an international conference on AIDS in Africa that the gap between rich and poor countries concerning care for people infected by the deadly virus was becoming "morally reprehensible".

Piot said the UN, Senegal, and Cote d'Ivoire were negotiating with pharamaceutical firms in order to make drugs more accessible to millions of Africans.

But he added that while progress had been made, large-scale treatment programs still did not exist on the continent.

Very few Africans - who spend an average of 10 dollars a year on health care - can afford life-prolonging and pain-reducing drugs made in the west, and which cost about 12,000 dollars a year per person.

"Access to even the most basic of generic medicines is woefully inadequate," Piot said.

"Therefore, mechanisms such as compulsory licensing, transfer of technology, parallel import of drugs and joint procurement by several countries should be investigated," he added.

The UNAIDS chief said that while international treaties on trade and intellectual property must be respected, "we surely have compelling justification: AIDS is an unprecedented crisis, requiring special measures."

Piot said by the end of last year, more than 33 million people, a number that exceeds the entire population of Canada, were living with HIV in Africa.

Western drug producers have come under fire for using patent rights claims to block developing countries from making or marketing equivalent medications.

Meanwhile, the South African drug company Biomoox Pharmaceuticals on Sunday announced on the sidelines of the conference that it had launched a product which supports the human immune system.

It said the drug had been clinically tested on more than 300 patients and that the results were encouraging.

"The aim of the company is to develop effective, safe and affordable products for the general public," a company statement said.

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